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sideration, they will soften their proceedings towards her, wherefore we advise her to renew her application for admission to gospel ordinances, and humbly hope they will receive her, and overlook all that is passed, exercising mutual forgiveness, without requiring a full confession." She renewed her request and was refused. I perceive other complaints against other brethren. The neighbouring towns were, it appears, in a similar situation, and Mr. Dexter was invited to attend at Milton, and at Braintree, to assist in councils in those places, convened for the purposes of healing difficulties. From these and numerous other evidences of church meetings, and ecclesiastical councils, in this and other towns about this period, we have good ground for the conjecture, that the litigious propensities of the community, which now find more congenial objects in the various pursuits of men, were then directed solely to church discipline. And we may suppose too, that the clergy and the friends of good order, soon learned what the history of the christian church fully teaches, that ecclesiastical councils, and synods, and church meetings, to prevent dissensions, are more likely to contribute to these evils, than affect their remedy. With these dissentions, Mr. Dexter was painfully affected, but the latter part of his ministry was calm and quiet. He was greatly respected by all, was deemed a very able man to advise other churches in difficulty, and was much employed in that way.

In his ministry, 1742, the mode of admitting members into the church was so far changed, that the candidate for admission might at his own discretion, make a public profession, or a more private one before the min

ister.

The New England psalms were used in the church until 1751, when they were exchanged for Tate and Brady, bound in a volume with a collection of Dr. Watt's psalms and hymns. A record of Mr. Dexter's, denotes that until the commencement of his ministry, the deacons read the psalm and tuned it. October 24, 1724. Voted that Mr. Jabez Pond shall for the future read the psalm, and tune it, deacon Wight not being able. Mr. Dexter preached a century sermon, in 1738. If the second century of this town be commemorated, should it not be on the first of September, 1835, for two hundred years before that time, the settlement began. The records of the town began

September, 1635. Mr. Dexter died January 29, 1755. He was the father of the Hon. Samuel Dexter, before noticed.

February 6, 1756. The reverend Jason Haven, of Framingham, was ordained as the successor of Mr. Dexter, and continued in the ministry until May, 1803. He lived here at a time more propitious to the peace of the church. Political discussions and revolutionary events strongly attracted the minds of men. The church meetings of his days were convened principally to give instructions for the management of the church lands, which were so well and so steadily improved all his time, that the ample funds of the first parish at the present time afford alone a good living. In gratitude it should be remembered, that the fathers of the church, under their pressing necessities for a long number of years, suffered these funds to accumulate. To the influence of Mr. Haven, supported by his deacons and the church, does this praise belong. Mr. Haven was hearty in the revolutionary cause. He was a delegate to the convention which formed the state constitution.

Revolutionary times having produced a disposition to investigate all the former principles and opinions of men, in politics and church government, Mr. Haven caused the mode of admission into the church to be altered. This was done in 1793. The new method required the candidate to be propounded to the congregation by the minister. If no objections within fourteen days were made, he was then of course admitted. At the same time the church covenant and creed was altered, and made very general in its expressions. This creed had so few articles, that all persons professing and calling themselves christians, would assent to it without any objection. The church had ever in this place required of its members guilty of unlawful cohabitation before marriage, a public confession of that crime, before the whole congregation. The offending female stood in the broad isle beside the partner of her guilt. If they had been married, the declaration of the man was silently assented to by the woman. This had always been a delicate and difficult subject for church discipline. The public confession, if it operated as a corrective, likewise produced merriment with the profane. I have seen no instance of a public confession for this fault, until the ministry of Mr. Dexter, and then they were extremely rare. In 1781, the

church gave the confessing parties the privilege of making a private confession to the church, in the room of a public confession. In Mr. Haven's ministry, the number of cases of unlawful cohabitation, increased to an alarming degree. For twenty-five years before 1781, twenty-five cases had been publicly acknowledged before the congregation, and fourteen cases within the last ten years. This brought out the minister to preach on the subject from the pulpit. Mr. Haven, in a long and memorable discourse, sought out the cause of the growing sin, and suggested the proper remedy. He attributed the frequent recurrence of the fault to the custom then prevalent, of females admitting young men to their beds, who sought their company with intentions of marriage. And he exhorted all to abandon that custom, and no longer expose themselves to temptations which so many were found unable to resist.

The immediate effect of this discourse on the congregation, has been described to me, and was such as we must naturally suppose it would be. A grave man, the beloved and revered pastor of the congregation, comes out suddenly on his audience, and discusses a subject on which mirth and merriment only had been heard, and denounces a favorite custom. The females blushed, and hung down their heads. The men too hung down their heads, and now and then looked out from under their fallen eye brows, to observe how others supported the attack. If the outward appearance of the assembly was somewhat composed, there was a violent internal agitation in many minds. And now, when forty-five years have expired, the persons who were present at the delivery of that sermon, express its effect by saying, "How queerly I felt!" "What a time it was!" "This was close preaching indeed !!" The custom was

abandoned. The sexes learned to cultivate the proper degree of delicacy in their intercourse, and instances of unlawful cohabitation in this town since that time have been extremely rare. What sermon or eloquent address can be pointed out, that has produced such decidedly good effects.

Mr. Haven frequently assisted at ordinations. In 1761, he preached the artillery election sermon. In 1766, he preached the general election sermon. In 1789, he preached the Dudleian lecture, and in 1791, he preached the convention sermon. He died May 17, 1803, in the seventy-first year of his age. Dr. Prentiss of Medfield, in a funeral discourse, gave him a high character, which

comes nearly up to Cowper's model of a good preacher, and has expressed him, "simple, grave, sincere, in doctrine uncorrupt, in language plain, and plain in manner."

The circumstance that the first five clergymen have been highly praised, without any notice of any fault or defect in the character of any one of them, may excite suspicion that there has not been sufficient discrimination between that eulogy which flows from friendship and a love of display, and that just commendation which rests on real merit. If there be error in this respect, it cannot now be discovered.

The reverend Joshua Bates was ordained a colleague with Mr. Haven, March 16, 1803, and was dismissed from the ministry over the parish at his own request, February, 20, 1818. The cause of this request was his appointment to the presidency of Middlebury college. The situation of the religious society during his ministry here, was similar to that of many others in New England at that time, and well deserves to be calmly reviewed, when facts are remembered without the excitement which they produced. From the time when Mr. Jefferson first became a candidate for the presidency, to the time of his retiring from it, it was frequently objected against him that he was a disbeliever of the christian doctrines. Notwithstanding this objection, a large portion of this parish supported his administration. The objection was so frequently and so earnestly reiterated, that this circumstance produced a conviction in the minds of many men, that political reasons, and not fear of danger to the interest of religion, were the real motives of this attack on the president. A respectable minority in the parish, on the other hand, who saw their neighbours apparently uninfluenced by so serious a charge, concluded that they had already come under the influence of wickedness in high places, and had acquired a strong propensity to infidelity. The minister of a flock thus divided, would be in a critical situation, even had he determined to observe the strictest neutrality between the parties. But Dr. Bates deemed it his duty to proclaim aloud his fears and apprehensions from the influence of infidelity. He clearly discovered, in conversation and in his pulpit, that the writings of one party had made a great impression on his mind. It was the fashion in those days to impute difference of opinion to improper motives, and even Dr. Bates

could not conceal his opinion, that he thought many of his hearers, at best, but doubtful christians. His frequent and explicit definition of a true christian, when applied by his hearers to themselves, so clearly excluded them, that a large portion of the society saw that their religious instructor viewed them in no other light than that of unworthy pretenders to the christian name. Notwithstanding the abilities, the prudence, the unexceptionable life and undoubted piety of Dr. Bates, sustained him in the ministry, and peace was maintained, not that peace which flows from harmony of sentiments and compatibility of religious sympathies, but that which arises from political expedience. In addition to this cause of disunion was another still more powerful; these times were pronounced the age of infidelity. Yet Dr. Bates did so explain and enforce some of the christian doctrines, that they always have excited doubts and controversy, and probably always will. This produced unfriendly criticism, which in turn exposed those who doubted, to the renewed charge of heresy and irreligious propensities.

Thus we can now perceive, in a calmer moment, that there was indeed in this period great danger of irreligion from great temptations, not from the solitary example of a single ruler being an infidel; a case after all, that was never proved, but from other causes. The great danger arose not from the writings of infidels, for very rarely were any books of that kind read in this town. But it arose from an injudicious attempt to stigmatize a popular and revered chief magistrate of the United States with the odious name of unbeliever, without sufficient evidence for such a charge. Secondly, from the frequent asserting in an age of free inquiry, some of the most difficult doctrines of the christian religion, without sufficient care; doctrines which have ever excited controversy. Thirdly, from the dangerous experiment of endeavouring to inlist the sincere attachments of christians to their own opinions and customs, in the cause of contending political parties. It cannot be denied that these combined causes, produced their natural effects, and held out to the rising generation many strong temptations, to doubt, to dispute, and even to condemn what all should be invited by gentle means to respect. Dr. Bates, a gentleman every way worthy of confidence and respect by this operation of things, lost

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